reading with the curious literalness of one to whom written sentences are unfamiliar, and handling words as though they were made of wood, separately of great importance, and possessed of shapes like tables or chairs.  In this way she came to conclusions, which had to be remodelled according to the adventures of the day, and were indeed recast as liberally as any one could desire, leaving always a small grain of belief behind them.

Ibsen was succeeded by a novel such as Mrs. Ambrose detested, whose purpose was to distribute the guilt of a woman’s downfall upon the right shoulders; a purpose which was achieved, if the reader’s discomfort were any proof of it.  She threw the book down, looked out of the window, turned away from the window, and relapsed into an arm-chair.

The morning was hot, and the exercise of reading left her mind contracting and expanding like the main-spring of a clock, and the small noises of midday, which one can ascribe to no definite cause, in a regular rhythm.  It was all very real, very big, very impersonal, and after a moment or two she began to raise her first finger and to let it fall on the arm of her chair so as to bring back to herself some consciousness of her own existence.  She was next overcome by the unspeakable queerness of the fact that she should be sitting in an arm-chair, in the morning, in the middle of the world.  Who were the people moving in the house—­moving things from one place to another?  And life, what was that?  It was only a light passing over the surface and vanishing, as in time she would vanish, though the furniture in the room would remain.  Her dissolution became so complete that she could not raise her finger any more, and sat perfectly still, listening and looking always at the same spot.  It became stranger and stranger.  She was overcome with awe that things should exist at all. . . .  She forgot that she had any fingers to raise. . . .  The things that existed were so immense and so desolate. . . .  She continued to be conscious of these vast masses of substance for a long stretch of time, the clock still ticking in the midst of the universal silence.

“Come in,” she said mechanically, for a string in her brain seemed to be pulled by a persistent knocking at the door.  With great slowness the door opened and a tall human being came towards her, holding out her arm and saying: 

“What am I to say to this?”

The utter absurdity of a woman coming into a room with a piece of paper in her hand amazed Rachel.

“I don’t know what to answer, or who Terence Hewet is,” Helen continued, in the toneless voice of a ghost.  She put a paper before Rachel on which were written the incredible words: 

DEAR MRS. AMBROSE—­I am getting up a picnic for next Friday, when we propose to start at eleven-thirty if the weather is fine, and to make the ascent of Monte Rosa.  It will take some time, but the view should be magnificent.  It would give me great pleasure if you and Miss Vinrace would consent to be of the party.—­